My Southern Legitimacy Statement follows: My mother had me in a Baptist hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, and my father almost missed my birth because he was watching the Andy Griffith Show. I was raised in a house that had a creek in the backyard and a picture of Elvis on…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am not born and bred but I have lived in the South–and if being an authentic individual is what the South is about–then I am Southern. Also, my son was born about as deep down as you can get and still be in America. Down Here…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Jeff is a musician, educator, and author from Huntsville, AL. He enjoys time alone to think and pursue creative projects, but not as much as he enjoys a good cup of coffee with his wife, Amy. The Writer’s Poem I don’t want to work tonight I’d rather…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the frosty Minnesota where the winters are long and harsh, and the sight of green grass is a memory to be cherished. That doesn’t mean that I’m as cold as the weather, though, and after visiting the south on numerous occasions, I feel I’ve picked…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the southwestern corner of Virginia and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I currently reside in Wilmington, North Carolina. My father’s businesses were always headquartered in southwest Virginia. A Brief Memoir of an East Coast Entrepreneur: How Past Endeavors Inform Future Business Dreams My father,…
My Southern legitimacy lies in being a native and lifelong citizen of a City that was once largest in the South and called its Queen City, la Nouvelle Orleans in l’Isle d’Orleans in SE Louisiana (the place whose bankers’ ten dollar francophonic dollars it’s said gave rise to the name”Dixie”)….
Southern Legitimacy Statement: John Dorroh’s Irish ancestors reached the shores of South Carolina a few hundred years ago, and began migrating to the west and south. County Antrim is well-represented by the Dorroh lineage. After traveling the world as an army brat, Dorroh spent most of his life in Columbus,…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Last year when Fairfax High school had a legitimate threat from a potential school shooter, the idea for this story began. When our local Jewish Community Center was horrifically vandalized, my thoughts turned to how faith and politics were represented in my Southern community. An Article of…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The story was inspired by a woman who lost everyone she loves and lives alone with her memories in a Southern mansion. L’appel du Vide The new moon has cast darkness over my home. A home sealed with squeals, laughter and cries for mom. I’ve lived here…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complex kaleidoscope of contradictions that historically coexisted through compartmentalizing when ideal clashed with real. Brutality and gentility, discrimination and democracy, hospitality and race/class hostility, and more odd couples, lived and live in our kaleidoscope, which at each twist shifts the aspect created by…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I fear that my complete listing of southern legitimacy would crash the cosmos & petunias so I shall HENCEFORTHWITH condense – I was born a coal miner’s son in the coal hollers of southwestern Virginia & as a child my family like many poor Appalachians migrated to…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in South Scottsdale, which is south of Old Town Scottsdale, so it’s not the city you think of when you think of Scottsdale, AZ. I’m from a place called St. Joseph, Missouri, which is south of the plains but north of the Ozarks. My grandfather…
We’re publishing 20 essays, memoirs, short stories, poetry collections … got it going on in August. Pay attention to our Southern Legitimacy Statements each month. They sure do make the Dead Mule sing. We’ve got some swell ones in August. Welcome to the Mule. Enjoy your visit. We’re so very…
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in southwest Florida where crocodiles living in the golf course lake routinely consumed small dogs whole. Cultural Debts I hadn’t thought of Jimmy Buffett for twenty years when, in the span of a week, he showed up three times: first in a news…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: This is a fake news story of how Nags Head, North Carolina lost its apostrophe. How Nags Head Lost its Apostrophe “Take it and be damned!” . . . Thomas J. Harkaway Perhaps the first and most important thing to say about Nags Head is that virtually…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I read that you folks originated in Pamlico. I used to work for the Sun Journal in New Bern. That was back in the days when daily newspapers were healthy. This story is one of a 100 that focuses on the city of Greensburg and Dinwoodie County,…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My earliest memories were of living in a small coal-mining “company house” near Shinnston West Virginia, and of using the two-holer out back. The aunt who raised me eventually moved the family to a small enclave of West Virginia ex-pats in southeastern Ohio, across the river from…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Grampa Navy was from Copper Hill, Tennessee, a place that still sounds like “Copper Heel, Tin ah see” when I type the words even though it’s been decades since he spoke about the acid and the Burra Burra mine. When I was about 9, living near…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As to Southern Legitimacy, in my day job as an archaeologist, I have dug holes and recovered history from throughout the Southeast. I have investigated the defining site types of the region, including whiskey stills, kilns where alkaline-glazed pottery was made, a 6-foot thick midden of oyster…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in New York with dyed-in-the wool Southern parents. They arrived in the city during The Depression determined “to make it,” as my father said, and they did. But they brought along with them the Southern rulebook of “shoulds” and expectations, which I called The…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: All you had to say was, “we don’t recommend you submit,” so I am submitting. Such is my legitimacy … Two Poems COOL JOHN FERGUSON He plays the requisite R&B, ballad, samba, smooth jazz, the pop tune all blued up then slowly ascends from the padded office…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from the deep south of the Deep South, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I lived in the Glory Land for 30 years until I decided to spread my Southerness abroad, and now I live in Bangkok, Thailand, promoting Southern speech (especially “y’all”) to coworkers and students alike. The…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: “Southern since ’63 with no plans to go anywhere else!” Mr. Aldon When my father died, Aldon Keane attended his wake in soiled jeans and a stained tee-shirt, his face a mask of tears. He hurtled into the sanctuary as though trying to forestall an emergency, to…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Rome, GA, and raised in Trion, Pennville, and Summerville, GA. After many years as a road musician and earning three degrees–A.S., B.A., M.A., I taught English in three colleges, two of them in Georgia, after returning to my roots. I now live and…